Marcus Tullius Cicero - Collected Quotes

"Constant practice devoted to one subject often prevails over both ability and skill." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Pro Balbo" cca. 56 BC)

"He [Simonides] inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty [of memory] must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written on it." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Oratore", 55 BC)

"Probability is the very guide of life." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Natura Deorum" ["On the Nature of the Gods"], 45 BC)

"Four dice are cast and a Venus throw results-that is chance; but do you think it would be chance, too, if in one hundred casts you made one hundred Venus throws? It is possible for paints flung at rando mon a canvas to form the outline of a face; but do you imagine that an accidental scattering of pigments could produce the beautiful portrait of Venus of Cos? Suppose that a hog should form a letter 'A' on the ground with its snout; is that a reason for believing that it could write out Ennius's poem The Andromche?" (Marcus Tullius Cicero, cca. 44 BC)

"Is it possible, then, for any man to apprehend in advance occurrences for which no cause or reason can be assigned? What do we mean when we employ such terms as luck, fortune, accident, turn of the die, except that we are seeking to describe events which happened and came to pass in such a way that they either might not have happened and come to pass at all or might have happened and come to pass under quite different circumstances? How then can an event be anticipated and predicted which occurs fortuitously and as a result of blind chance and of the spinning of Fortune's wheel?" (Marcus Tulius Cicero, "De Divinatione", 44 BC)

"The first duty of man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Officiis", ["On Duties"], cca. 44 BC)

"The exact kind of language we employ in philosophical analyses of abstract truth is one thing, and the language used in attempts to popularize the subject is another." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De officiis" ["On Duties"], cca.44 BC)

"The Causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Epistolae ad atticum" ["Letters to Atticus"], cca. 46-44 BC)

"The most important events are often determined by very trivial causes." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Orationes Philippicae", 44-43 BC)

"For it is not having insufficient knowledge, but persisting a long time in insufficient knowledge that is shameful; since the one is assumed to be a disease common to all, but the other is assumed to be a flaw to an individual." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Inventione")

"In everything, without doubt, truth has the advantage over imitation." (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

"Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob […]." (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

"That is probable which for the most part usually comes to pass, or which is a part of the ordinary beliefs of mankind, or which contains in itself some resemblance to these qualities, whether such resemblance be true or false." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, "De Inventione")